Before I Go
by dontyouwannadance
Summary: "I don't know why, and I don't understand it, but I couldn't just move on with my life and spend the next twenty years regretting that I didn't tell you."


**Hello again. It's a bit late, but I've got a Christmas present for you. I hope you like it.**

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><p>Graduating high school was <em>by far<em> the _worst _thing Jade West had ever done in her entire life, she decided as she slammed the door shut behind her. With an empty container of potato salad in one hand and her cell phone in the other, she entered the kitchen with a scowl on her face and dropped the plastic dish into the garbage can.

Jade had taken on the job of stocking the refreshments table as a way to escape from the most catastrophic graduation party on the planet. Her parents had reconciled (for lack of a better word) for an entire month in order to put on this stupid party for her, and time had started running out this morning. They were both on each other's last nerve, and the daughter they'd foolishly had together was the whole reason they hadn't murdered each other yet. Both of Jade's stepparents, on the other hand, were somehow bonding in spite of this, and had taken on the job of greeting everyone who showed up, since Jade had given up on that after shaking hands and faking what felt like three hundred smiles, directed at people she didn't even know. With the way her parents were acting right now, she wondered how they had ever even managed to make this many friends.

Speaking of _friends, _Jade had yet to see any of her own. A bunch of random underclassmen had shown up for the free food and left without saying a thing to her, and about fifteen members of her graduating class had stopped by on their way down the graduation party line.

What was she even supposed to say to these people?

"Thanks for the money-less card, you worthless prick. Make sure to pick up some free food on your way out."

She had never wanted a stupid party. Graduating high school really wasn't much to celebrate in the first place – the only thing that changed after high school was the fact that the money from your part-time job flipping burgers went toward bills as well as your caffeine and/or drug habit.

_Welcome to the land of the adults, where we have debt and a life of misery to look forward to. Get comfortable. You'll be here for a while._

A nice dinner out would have been just fine. A couple hundred bucks in an envelope could have made her happy. She didn't want a stupid party. Most people around here didn't even have graduation parties, but Hollywood Arts was just small enough to warrant everyone having a party to celebrate the fact that they just barely graduated and are probably going to be the actors paid to talk about diarrhea in Pepto-Bismol commercials, if they even got that far.

It could be worse. Her parents could have decided to avoid each other and have two separate parties. The decorations could be yellow. A meteor could destroy the house and all the guests. There could be ducks.

"Hey, sorry I'm late." Beck snuck into the kitchen behind her just as Jade was grabbing the replacement potato salad from the refrigerator. "Your mom's beating your dad with a bag of potato chips out there… She took a swing at me when I tried to separate them. I take it the party's not going well?"

"Ask me that in two hour when it's over, if I haven't shot myself by then." She responded coldly as she shoved the plastic container into his hands.

"I'm glad my parents aren't throwing me a party." Beck commented, getting a dirty look in return.

"You're not helping. Why did you show up at all?"

"Sorry." He apologized immediately as he followed his girlfriend down the hall. "Are you upset I wasn't here from the beginning? I told you I might be late."

"No." She huffed, opening the back door with her elbow, as both of her hands were full of 24 packs of Pepsi. "It would've been nice to have someone to save me from all the old people who keep asking what's wrong with my hair, though."

"There's an old lady coming this way. She looks like she has a lot of questions."

"After the party do you want to go smoke some pot in my bedroom, or would you rather have sex instead?" She asked loudly, causing the woman who had been approaching her to put on a disgusted face and turn around. Beck just laughed, but looked slightly confused.

"That always works at dad's stupid dinner parties…" She explained through a smile. "And my parents are being extremely embarrassing today anyway, so who cares if their friends all think they raised a pot-smoking sex addict, right?" He just shook his head and remained silent, until he caught a group of people walking up the driveway behind Jade.

"Hey, look who's here!" She turned around to see Andre, Tori, Robbie (and Rex) walking their direction, with Cat running a couple yards behind them, trying to catch up.

"When did you move into a nursing home?" Andre joked upon reaching the refreshments table.

"My parents have a lot of ancient friends." Jade grumbled. "By the way, don't go in the house if murder scenes make you queasy. I haven't heard them yelling since they went inside."

"I will stay outside then…" Tori mumbled, moving closer to Jade so she could grab a soda from the cooler directly behind her. They made eye contact for a moment before Jade moved out of the way, which caused Tori to nearly lose her balance and fall. She steadied herself and moved back a few steps, her face so red it was radiating heat. Jade ignored her and sat down on the cooler with a sigh.

"You have no idea how much I hate this. If I had any more hate for this ridiculous party I would be splattered all over this table. I would literally blow up and die. I'm so miserable. Please get me out of here." She pleaded, looking up at Beck with the best puppy-dog face she'd ever pulled. It of course didn't work on him, and he just rested his hand on top of her head.

After a few more minutes of Jade's complaints, Andre, Robbie, and Cat all decided they were hungry and filled their plates before wandering off to find a table. Tori stayed with Beck and Jade, sipping her soda without saying anything. Every few seconds she would reach over and grab a handful of chips from the bowl beside her, while Beck tried to explain to Jade why he was an hour and a half late to her graduation party.

"Talkative old man at six o'clock." Beck suddenly interrupted his story to warn his girlfriend. Jade glanced over her shoulder, mumbled something under her breath, and raised her voice to ask Beck,

"Hey, do you mind if Tori joins us for a threesome later?" Tori's eyes grew three sizes and her mouth dropped open, but the man turned around and left immediately.

"Uhhh, what was- What do you- Why-"

"Sorry." Jade interrupted Tori's confused babbling to explain. "I actually know that guy and he _never _shuts up." She stood up to get into the cooler for a soda, while Beck explained further.

"Everytime someone comes this way to greet her, she says something vulgar to disgust them so they won't talk to her."

"Ohhh…" Tori drug out the word for a good two seconds, but still looked extremely uncomfortable. Beck rested a hand on her shoulder in a semi-comforting way, and gestured toward the table behind her.

"Why don't we get something to eat? The potato salad's been pretty popular and the barbeque looks great." He gently pushed her down to the start of the line, away from Jade, who had been pulled away for a very heated discussion with her mother by the back door.

"I'm not really-"

"Just eat." Beck ordered, as he took a plate for himself and started piling food onto it. "You don't wanna be near her right now."

"Oh. Okay." Tori mumbled sullenly as she split open a bun on her plate and reached for the barbeque. Half a scoop of potato salad and a slice of cake ended up on Tori's plate, and everything but the potato salad was still there half an hour later when Jade sunk into the empty chair beside her and banged her head on the table twice.

"Kill. Me." She demanded through her clenched teeth with her forehead still pressed to the hard surface.

"What's she mad at you for now?" Beck asked Jade, only for her to turn her head just enough to glare at him. "Right. Well, as much as I would love to stay and help you clean up, I've got somewhere to be, so…"

"You're kidding." Jade growled, finally sitting up. As she got out of her seat, everyone else at the table loudly scooted their chairs away, expecting much more than they got, which was only a staring contest between the couple, before she mumbled something along the lines of "just go" and sat back down while he apologized multiple times and then wandered off.

Nobody said a word for an entire minute, until Andre broke the silence by acknowledging the food left on Tori's plate.

"You alright?" He asked her, nodding toward the barbeque sandwich and the slice of cake that she'd played with until it was a pile of crumbs spread across the entire plate.

"Oh, umm… Yeah. I just… I'm going out for dinner and I didn't wanna eat too much." Andre just stared at her, knowing that wasn't her problem. "And, you know… graduation's kind of bittersweet. This could be the last time we're all together for a long time…" Everyone, even Jade, whose dreary facial expression hadn't changed since Beck had left, turned to look at her.

"Don't say that."

"We'll still see each other"

"We've got the whole summer." Everyone started mumbling disagreements, but they all knew that Tori could be right. They couldn't be sure they wouldn't get a role and have to leave for some movie set in Chicago, or Dallas, or even Antarctica a week from now.

"We're all stuck with each other for life." Jade agreed with them. "Who else would be friends with you losers?"

"Thanks, Jade. That's really reassuring." Tori mumbled, her eyes falling back down to her plate as she poked at her food some more with her fork.

"Well, we should get going…" Andre said hesitantly as he got out of his chair and pushed it in. "We were all gonna stop at Jake's party and it ends in an hour." Cat and Robbie nodded in agreement and stood up, but Tori remained seated. "You coming?"

"No, my parents were just gonna pick me up here on the way to dinner." She forced a smile and waved as her friends gathered their things, congratulated Jade, and left.

"Well." Jade muttered, looking around at her party guests, who were all starting to leave as well. "I have to go talk to people or my mom will kill me."

"Okay…" Tori breathed, closing her eyes. "Umm…Jade? When you have time, I really need to talk to you about something in private…" Her eyes flickered open and she saw Jade staring at her, with one eyebrow raised and a confused look on her face.

"Uhh… Alright. In private?" Tori nodded. "You can go wait in my room then, while I go talk to my neighbors real fast. I'll meet you down there in like, two minutes.

"Okay." Tori was surprised by Jade's reaction. She'd expected her to at least question what this was about, or demand to talk about it right at the table. Instead, Jade wandered off to make conversation with a few guests in order to please her mother, and Tori dumped her plate in the garbage and snuck inside, wandering into Jade's bedroom, which she'd only been inside one other time, when they'd been partnered up for their script-writing class. They had argued half the time and hadn't finished the assignment until nearly four o'clock in the morning.

Jade's room was messy. Among all of the weird things she had decorated the room with, she had a few gift bags littering the floor beside her bed – obviously graduation presents from people who hadn't made it to the party – her bed covers were crumpled on top of her mattress and hanging off on the left side, one of her lamps was knocked off the table it usually sat on, piles of folded laundry covered the top of her dresser, and she had had half a dozen photo albums spread out on the floor by her desk, filled with pictures of a baby Tori assumed was Jade.

Tori flipped through the album closest to her, smiling when she realized her mother wasn't the only one who had taken five thousand embarrassing pictures of her children in the bath tub. She flipped past those quickly, not wanting to get caught by Jade looking at pictures of her as a naked two year old.

When she reached the end of that photo album, Tori returned it to its spot on the floor and sat down in Jade's chair while she waited. As the seconds ticked by, she started losing the courage she'd spent the entire day – and night before – building up. She was about to get up and leave when the door burst open and Jade entered the room. She softly closed the door behind her and leaned against it, crossing her arms over her chest as she looked at Tori, who was still seated in the arm chair with her heart beating a thousand times a second.

"So?"

"So…" Jade stared right at her and Tori swallowed hard, struggling to open her mouth again. "Umm… What I wanted to say was… I uh… Since we just graduated and all and we'll all be going off to do…ummm… our lives and stuff… I mean, I just… We're all kind of starting over, right? High school's finished and now we're moving on with our lives, and things will be different and nobody will know what we were like before, and we can turn ourselves into completely different people, right? Because we're about to go out into the world and meet all sorts of new people who don't know us, and it's kind of a new beginning, so we're just… starting over." Jade slid her back down the door and sat down, giving Tori an impatient look while she babbled on and on incoherently. "So before we go out into the world and become adults and stuff…" She took a deep breath and tried to get to the point. "I'm just going to do something childish, and I'm gonna say this and then I'm going to get out of here, okay?"

"Oh my god. You haven't even _started _to tell me the thing you wanted to tell me yet?" Tori just frowned and opened her mouth a couple times, only for no words to come out. Jade rolled her eyes and started to stand up before Tori finally spit it out.

"I'm in love with you. And I know it's not right, and it's weird, and there's probably something _seriously _wrong with me, but I have been for a while, and I don't know why, and I don't understand it, but I couldn't just move on with my life and spend the next twenty years regretting that I didn't tell you." She closed her eyes, hard, trying to stop the tears that came out anyway, and then started for the door, which Jade was still partially blocking.

"No, no. Wait a minute. Don't leave yet." Jade stretched her arm out, preventing Tori from getting to the door. "You need to calm down. I don't need you hyperventilating and dying in my house, as cool as that would be…" She started to reach for Tori's shoulder to direct her back to the chair, but decided touching her was a bad idea, so she just waved her free arm in that direction. Tori sat down and covered her face with both her hands while she continued to cry out of sheer humiliation.

"I already knew that you felt that way." She explained, sitting down on the floor in front of Tori.

"…You did?"

"Yes. Of course I did. Did you really think I was playing with your feelings unintentionally?" Tori looked through the cracks in her fingers, still unable to breathe properly. "I think I've known for longer than you have." Tori pulled her hands away, but kept wiping at her eyes. Jade was smiling now, which Tori thought was kind of odd.

"I…I don't…"

"Don't worry about it. You obviously have great taste." She laughed and reached out to shake Tori's knee. "So now you know that I know, which takes _all_ the fun out of tormenting you, but I can find someone else to pick on." She shrugged and stood up, pushing the photo album Tori had looked at away with her foot. "I need to get back to the party… So unless you have anything else you'd like to confess…"

"Uhh, no. That was it." Tori's arms both dropped to her sides as she consciously tried to stop covering her face. "Thanks for not being mad…" Jade shrugged her shoulders again.

"Doesn't everyone like to be loved?" She opened the door and motioned for Tori to go first. "Oh!" Her hand met with the anxious girl's shoulder as she stopped her from going any further. "My makeup remover is in the top drawer on the right side. You might want to clean up your face a little. You look kind of…well, the mirror can tell you." She directed Tori to her bathroom with a flick of the wrist and left her to get herself together, while she returned to the party.

…

Two days later, Andre left home with the intention of going to BF Wangs for lunch, but before he could make it to his car, he was pulled aside – and nearly killed via a heart attack – by his best friend.

"Andre." She loosened her tight grip on his arm but didn't let go. "I umm… You know the other day when you called me a hypocrite and told me not to do that thing?" He nodded as he pried her fingers off his bicep. "Well I did it anyway." She didn't say another word and stared at him for several seconds before he spoke.

"Well, what did she say?"

"She said she already knew…and she was okay with it." Andre's eyebrows bunched together and his mouth opened slightly.

"Uhh, are you sure you told the right person?" She was too distressed to answer and just nodded before running her hand through her hair.

"I'm glad she didn't punch me in the face, but I kind of… I don't know how exactly I pictured this playing out, but I guess a part of me was kind of…foolishly hoping that she'd say she felt the same way. She just laughed though, and said she'd known for a long time and that she'd used my feelings against me and would have to find someone else to torment. She just… She didn't even care. She knew how I felt about her and she used it against me, all this time..."

"She's Jade…" Andre answered, as if that explained everything.

"I know." She sighed and frowned at him. "I know. I didn't really expect you to help me. I actually came over here because I'm gonna be leaving in a couple hours and I wanted to say goodbye, and ask you to, uhh… On the off chance that she comes looking for me… Could you just…not tell her where I am?"

"You _don't_ want me to tell her?"

"I know, I know. It doesn't make _any_ sense but can you just promise me that? Please?"

"Fine." He agreed, sighing as he checked his watch.

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"Unless she threatens you with a deadly weapon, you won't tell her?" She stared him down, not blinking until he answered her.

"Uhh, what exactly would you consider a 'deadly weapon?' Do really low-cut shirts count?"

"Andre!" Tori playfully slapped him across the chest, but clarified, "No. Low-cut shirts don't count as deadly weapons. You need to be strong and keep your eyes up."

"Oh, so you can fantasize about her, but I can't even look for a second?" He joked, earning another slap.

"I don't _fantasize _about her…" Tori lied, turning bright red.

"Sure you don't." Andre teased, grabbing a hold of her elbow. "Come on, let's go get lunch."

"I don't have time."

"Sure you do." Andre drug his hypocritical jerk of a best friend to his car for what very well might be the last time for a long time.

…

It was five in the morning when Jade woke up out of a deep sleep, sweating so hard that her sheets were stuck to every inch of her body. This was the third night in a row this had happened, and it was getting harder and harder to convince herself that these dreams had nothing to do with Tori's confession, no matter how big a part she was playing in them. She couldn't even be concerned with the fact that she was actually, physically sweating nearly enough to fill a swimming pool because these dreams were getting her so worked up.

She had no idea why this was happening now. She'd known Tori had feelings for her. She'd known about it for _two whole years, _and her subconscious mind didn't give a shit about Tori that whole time. She almost wished that she _had _gotten angry with Tori. Maybe that would have scared her out of Jade's dreams, or at the very least helped convince Jade that she still hated the girl.

They hadn't spoken in a whole week, and even at the party, other than Tori's mess of a confession, they had hardly said two words to each other. That panicked admission of supposed love was hardly anything to get worked up over. There was no reason for her stupid subconscious mind to be deluded into thinking that she felt anything, in any way, for Tori. And that was the thing – her mind was obviously messing with her, because none of the feelings that showed up in her dreams were _real. _She didn't _actually _want to touch Tori, or talk to her, or even look at her. She wanted Tori out of her life, but although she appeared to be physically gone – God only knew where she'd gone off to. The group had been Tori-less the three times they'd met over the past week, but nobody had explained why - she just wouldn't get out of Jade's head.

What made this even more messed up was the fact that she'd never in her life had a single dream like this about her boyfriend. Beck stayed out of her dreams, for the most part, and if he did show up it was only to get eaten by a shark, or drive her to Candy Land in his flying pink convertible, or bathe in a pool full of frozen peas. Granted, the kind of things that happened in her dreams with Tori happened in real life with Beck, so there wasn't a need for any of that in her sleep. Not that the fact it was happening in her dreams meant there was any need for it at all. She didn't need anything from Tori, _especially _that.

She would lie in bed thinking about it for quite a while though, every time she woke up from a dream like this, so maybe she did need something from Tori… Maybe her brain had been trying to tell her something through her dreams. That couldn't be, though, because if that were the case, her brain was trying to tell her to keep her boyfriend out of salt water, to stuff her face with enough sugar to cause diabetes fifty times over, and to invest in the vegetable market.

Jade's level of frustration was getting unbelievably high. She was getting more and more stressed out each time she had this stupid dream, and it had only happened three times. What if it kept happening? What if she had this dream tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that? What if she had these disgusting Tori dreams every day for the rest of her life?

She was just having them because her brain liked to torture her, obviously. They meant nothing. They couldn't possibly mean anything. They were just mindless little scenarios playing over and over in her head because she was going through a change in her life. They didn't mean that she liked Tori at all. She loved Beck. Tori was _nothing _like Beck. There wasn't even a comparison there. She felt love for Beck, and Tori… Well, she hated Tori. She _still _hated her.

But she didn't hate her. She hadn't hated her in a long time. That had stopped _so _long ago. She'd been pretending, keeping up appearances, for years now. Tori was a friend, actually. A horribly close friend. Nauseatingly close to earning the title of _best _friend. She _did _feel something for Tori, and maybe it was a little bit of love, in that "you're one of my best friends and I'd cry if you died" kind of way. Or maybe… Maybe it was love, in that "I've seen you naked in my dreams" kind of way.

…

"I don't understand." Beck bent the tab on his soda can back and forth, breaking it off. "Are you breaking up with me because of the thing with your party?"

"No. I'm breaking up with you because we… well… We're starting a new part of our lives now, and we've been together for so long, we just… I just need to figure out if I really want this part to include you." He looked up from his can and Jade could tell he still wasn't taking her seriously. They'd broken up a hundred times before and it had never really meant anything because they always ended up back together. It was a Boy Who Cried Wolf kind of thing, and now the wolf was here, and its name was Tori Vega.

"Okay then." He responded calmly as he dropped the tab into the open soda can and pushed it away.

"Beck I'm serious. I mean it this time."

"You always s-"

"I know I always say that but this time I really do mean it. We need to be apart." He still wasn't taking her seriously. He loved her, right? If he really thought she was leaving him, he'd be trying to make her stay, and he wasn't doing that. "So…you can go out and date whoever you want to. I'm not your girlfriend anymore. We're done. Okay?" At that, he finally started to realize she meant it this time.

"What? So there's another guy? Is that it?"

"No, that's not it. I just need us to be apart. If we… If we're meant to be together, we'll find our way back. You believe that, right?"

"Don't you?" He was standing now – that was a sign she'd finally gotten through.

"I don't know."

…

Jade rang the doorbell at Tori's house and waited for what felt like forever. She had to be here. Where did Tori even go when she wasn't with her friends? She was always home. Every time Jade needed her, she could be counted on to be on the other side of the door.

She didn't answer, though. Nobody was coming to the door, and Jade almost felt like she was being robbed. This wasn't supposed to happen. She rang the doorbell again. Still no answer. Just as she was turning to leave, the door finally flung open.

"Haven't you ever heard of patien- oh, Jade!" Trina stood in the doorway, standing up straight with a timid look on her face when she realized who was visiting. "What are you doing here?"

"Is Tori here?" Jade asked impatiently, rolling her eyes.

"No, she moved out last week." Trina instantly flinched, cursing herself as it was obvious she wasn't supposed to say that.

"She what?" She_ moved? _Jade couldn't have possibly heard that correctly. There was no way Tori had moved out of her parents' home. She couldn't survive on her own.

"Uhh, yeah. She doesn't live here anymore…"

"Well, where'd she move to?" Had she fallen asleep? Was this another crazy dream?

"I don't know." Trina answered too quickly for it to be true.

"Yes you do."

"I don't."

"You do."

"No."

"Tell me."

"I can't. I don't know the address."

"You're lying."

"No I'm not."

"I will find out. You know that, right?"

"Sure." Trina smiled nervously and grabbed a hold of the door. "See you later!" With that, she closed the door, leaving Jade on her patio with no clue what had just happened to her.

Tori had _moved? _Why? It was the beginning of June! It wasn't time to move out and go to school, or get a job, or be an adult in any way. It was summer. It was the _last _summer they had as kids. They weren't supposed to grow up just yet.

Andre had to know where Tori was. He was easy to break. He would tell her.

…

The cable guy was an hour late when the buzzer rang in Tori's new apartment. She hit the button, letting him in, and sighed. She hated this apartment. She didn't like being an adult. It just sucked.

A full minute later, when there was a knock at the door, Tori opened it, only to see that her cable guy was female and looked a whole lot like Jade.

"Oh no." She muttered to herself as Jade pushed her way into the apartment and angrily threw her bag on the counter.

"What are you doing?" Jade asked after making ten different hand motions and struggling with coming up with words in any language at all. Tori couldn't quite decipher the emotion showing in the other girl's eyes, and she could hardly hear her own thoughts over the sound of Jade's heavy breathing.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Why did you move out? Why are you living in this shithole? What's wrong with you?" Tori couldn't tell if she should be offended or not. This was starting to sound a lot like worry – something Jade would only do if she actually cared.

"I just…had to get out of there."

"Why?" Tori couldn't find words to answer. She was too busy staring at Jade's quivering lips to speak. It couldn't be natural to take that many breaths in such a short time.

"Are you alright? Do you want to sit down? I could get you a gla-"

"_I'm fine._ Just answer me! Why? What did you need to get away from? Was it me?"

"Well, you were part of the reason…"

"You didn't have to go. You could have stayed." Jade was shaking, and Tori didn't know what to do. She had no idea what to say. How could she really explain to Jade the reason why she'd had to move here, when there weren't really words for it?

"You don't get it."

"Yeah, you're right. I don't get it. I don't understand why you would tell me that you love me and then _move. _I don't understand why you didn't want me to know. Did you think I wouldn't notice? Because I did, Tori. I figured it out all by myself."

"I didn't think you'd care." Tori confessed, once she was able to talk. Each time Jade opened her mouth, it surprised her more and more. She hadn't expected her to be concerned enough about Tori's disappearance to actually seek her out in the first place.

"I don't care that you love me. It isn't right, and yeah, it's _really_ weird, and there's _definitely_ something wrong with you, but that doesn't matter. I care about you, and you hurt me." The room went silent and neither of them even tried to make eye contact.

"I don't know what to tell you." Tori finally spoke, just to break the silence. "We're adults now. We have to grow up. This is how I'm doing that." Jade nodded while simultaneously licking her lips.

"Okay."

"I think you should probably go." Tori started to lead the way back to the door, and Jade followed her obediently out to the hall.

"Wait." Jade held out her hand to stop Tori from closing the door on her.

"_What?" _Tori leaned against the door frame, wishing Jade would just get out of here, and get out of her life, so she could move on and pretend that these feelings never existed, and that this never happened. Jade was still there though, standing in the hall with her arm against the door and her face not even two feet away from Tori's. She smiled a little, but it faded fast. She tried to pull herself together and be serious one last time before she finally opened her mouth to ask the question,

"Before I go, can you kiss me?"


End file.
